@ODIN
<3 u and me being sick and cranky, and still being in better moods than most people.
@F8AL, and pretty much everyone
Lag compensation is, unfortunately, a necessary part of the game. Especially when it comes to parties. If there were no parties allowed, there would be no need for it. Allow me to elaborate.
CoD does its matchmaking based on all the players' upload/download speeds and their ping. Whoever has the lowest ping and best ul/dl usually gets host. This is because they have the best connection to the internet, which makes the overall connection of the match better. Now, what about kids with bad connections? Well, CoD takes care of that before you even enter a lobby. It partitions off people with different pings and internet connections into separate games. This way, kids with bad internet play with other kids with bad internet, so their lag is appx. even, thus nullifying it.
HOWEVER,
When playing in a party, the chance that players will have differing pings and ul/dl speeds is still there. But CoD matchmaking MUST keep them in the same game, even though they have different speeds. Since a pack is only as slow as the weakest link, matchmaking will place the party in a lobby with players of the slowest internet connection of the party. It then categorizes the number of players who have approximately the same connection speed. Whichever category has the most players, the person with the best internet speed IN THAT CATEGORY will receive host.
Do the math.
If you have a party full of people with good internet, but even one player with a slow speed, you will be placed in a slow internet lobby. If the majority of the players in the same lobby were placed there by the matchmaking system (AKA they also have a slow speed), then people with good internet will be punished by getting lag so that they match the speed of the majority of the players in the lobby.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is lag compensation. It can work both with and against you, depending on the parties joining the lobby.
As ridiculous as this may seem, I can't comprehend any sort of solution to this with the current system. Perhaps it can be made better, but CoD can't address the core issue: splitting a party.
I say "the current system", because the only way to fix lag compensation is to remake the system and implement dedicated servers. That way, if one person has bad internet, they are the only person to suffer from it and not an entire team.
*EDIT: this is mostly speculation, but backed by experience and facts